1

Name of Author(s): Steve Gaines, Pipes Gaines, Robyn Minor, Daniel Pike

Author’s Title (editor, columnist, etc.): Editor, Publisher, City Editor, Managing Editor

Newspaper: Daily News

Address: 813 College Street

City: Bowling Green

State: Ky

ZIP: 42101

Phone: 270-783-3269

Fax: 270-783-3237

E-Mail: sgaines@bgdailyn-

ews.com

Submitted by: Joe Imel

Title of Person Submitting: Director of Media Operations

Phone Number: 270-783-3273

E-mail Address: jimel@bgdailynews.com

What is the subject/title of the entry?

City/count lack transparency in taxpayer funded project

Date(s) of publication?

5-30-2015, 6-07-2015, 6-21-2015, 8-19-2015, 11-15-2015, 12-31-2015

Is your newspaper under 50,000 circulation or above 50,000 circulation? Under 50,000

2

Please give a brief explanation of issues discussed and the results achieved. (This space will expand as you type in your comments.)

The Bowling Green Daily News broke the story that lack of oversight, changed contracts and misuse of funds forced officials to seek new bonds and a new sub developer to cover a shortfall of more than $4.5 million to complete at mixed-use wrap around the downtown parking garage.

The Daily News filed countless open-record requests, hired attorneys to interpret convoluted contracts, poured over thousands of pages of documents to uncover misuse of funds, fraud, and a glaring lack of transparency that might in the end leave taxpayers holding the bag.

Breaking the story and then editorializing about the lack of transparency and misuse of funds, ultimately got the Kentucky State Auditor Andy Beshear involved in the form of an audit.

Charges and a lawsuit are still being considered by the Warren County Attorney and the Com-monwealth’s Attorney

The Daily News is continuing to report, dig and editorialize on this story as it still ongoing.

Mallard Filmore

Page 4A – Saturday, May 30, 2015

OPINIONNEWS MAKERS

bgdailynews.com

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I was driving just north of Bowling Green on Interstate 65 when the car in front of me ran over an enormous piece of tire tread.

This piece of tire came flying toward my car, hit-ting the car’s hood and coming through the wind-shield on the passenger’s side. As I pulled my car off on Exit 36, parked and called 911, my body began to go into survival mode, and my brain stopped being able to make decisions for myself.

Within a minute of pulling over, two separate groups of people stopped to see if I was OK and to help me in my shocked state. The first man’s name was Charles, and I regret that I didn’t get his last name. He was an angel. The second group that pulled over was Dale and Sharon Bessette. Dale called the fire department to send an ambulance. Charles gently checked my face and legs for any injuries. Sharon helped by immediately getting on the phone with rental car companies, tow trucks and my insurance company to get the ball roll-ing on decisions that I couldn’t make at the time. Warren County sheriff’s deputies (one of which was Deputy Vedad Hadzikadunic) who were on scene, along with the EMTs, were all incredibly professional but also incredibly kind.

To all of the civil servants and servant-hearted bystanders who gave me water, made sure I wasn’t injured and helped me with their decisions as well as with their kindness, I am so grateful for the com-passion and warmth I experienced in the midst of something so scary. Bowling Green is blessed to have you all as its residents. My deepest apprecia-tion from the bottom of my heart.

Emily KilbournNashville

Motorist salutes helpfrom law enforcement,other drivers on I-65

MAILBOX

About a decade ago, a doc-tor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating condi-tions of clinical practice. “How did you know to get out of medicine in 1978?” he asked with a smile.

“I didn’t,” I replied. “I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I’d chosen the wrong vocation.”

I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class’s 40th reunion report and reading some entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends and the consid-erable achievements. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment with what medical practice had become.

The complaint was voca-tional – an incessant interfer-ence with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority.

As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doc-tor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from gov-ernment, insurance companies and lawyers ... progressively intrusive and usually unpro-ductive rules and regulations,”

topped by an electronic health records mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” – and degraded medicine.

I hear this every-where. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitter-ness about the EHR mandate.

You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraor-dinary loss to soci-ety – and maybe to you, one day – of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical expe-rience.

And for what? The newly elected Barack Obama told the nation in 2009 that “it just won’t save billions of dollars” – $77 billion a year – “and thousands of jobs, it will save lives.” He then threw a cool $27 billion at going paperless by 2015.

It’s 2015, and what have we achieved? The $27 billion is gone, of course. The $77 bil-lion in savings became a joke. Indeed, reported the Health and Human Services inspector

general in 2014, “EHR tech-nology can make it easier to commit fraud,” as in Medicare

fraud, the copy-and-paste func-tion allowing the instant filling of vast data fields, facilitating billing inflation.

That’s just the beginning of the losses. Consider the myriad small practices that, facing ruinous transition costs in equipment, soft-ware, training and time, have closed

shop, gone bankrupt or been swallowed by some larger entity.

This hardly stays the long arm of the health care police, however. As of Jan. 1, if you haven’t gone electronic, your Medicare payments will be cut by 1 percent this year, rising to 3 percent (potentially 5 per-cent) in subsequent years.

Then there is the toll on doc-tors’ time and patient care. One study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that emergency room doctors spend 43 percent of their time entering electronic records information, 28 percent with

patients. Another study found that family practice physicians spend on average 48 minutes a day entering data.

The geniuses who rammed this through undoubtedly thought they were rationaliz-ing health care. Banking went electronic. Why not medicine?

Because banks deal with nothing but data. They don’t listen to your heart or exam-ine your groin. Clicking boxes on an endless electronic form turns the patient into a data machine.

Why did all this happen? Because liberals in a hurry refuse to trust the wisdom of individual practictioners, who were already adopting EHR on their own, but gradually, organically, as the technology became ripe and the costs tol-erable. Instead, Washington picked a date out of a hat and decreed: Digital by 2015.

The results are not pretty. EHR is health care’s Solyndra. Many, no doubt, feasted nicely on the $27 billion, but the rest is waste: money squandered, patient care degraded, good physicians demoralized.

Like my old classmates who signed up for patient care – which they still love – and now do data entry.

THE DOCTOR IS OUTElectronic records system cramps abilities to see, treat patients

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Syndicated

columnist

Editorial boardPipes Gaines, co-publisher

Andy Dennis, managing editorSteve Gaines, editor/editorial page

editorRobyn Minor, city editor

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher

from 1922 to 1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor

from 1946 to 1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947-2007Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

The Daily News

“I like you, I like my job. I am not perfect, nobody is perfect, but we will do a good

job together I am sure.”— Sepp Blatter, who was re-elected

as FIFA president for a fifth term Friday despite criminal investigations

into corruption

It’s no wonder people are ques-tioning how bond money was spent on the development of Hitcents Park Plaza, the commercial wrap of the parking garage adjacent to Bowling Green Ballpark.

No reasonable person would think that spending money to buy food for research and development (tasting) or consulting fees to find an execu-tive chef or the purchases of a Beer Ball table (a bar arcade-type game) and shuffleboard were OK. Yet they were disbursed by a bond trustee that had no fiduciary duty to make sure such expenses were allowed.

Those are sexy things that jump out to anyone who takes the time to review the draw requests for bond money – or at least the ones that were made available through an open records request by the Daily News. Some of those draws were missing for a full two weeks after the initial open records request was filled. Included in those draws initially left out, but other-wise obtained by the Daily News,

was an $844,000 draw made by the Warren County Downtown Economic Development Authority. That money was used for construc-tion expenses related to the park-ing garage itself – an expense the authority said was needed because of the commercial wrap.

The broad category of consult-ing fees is another, perhaps less sexy, area where we take issue with money being spent.

Hundreds of thousands of dol-lars fell into that category, includ-ing to a restaurant consulting firm in Chicago, where much of the tasting took place. We know that because there were bills for raw foods pur-chased in Chicago.

Then there is the matter of at least $152,000 paid to CCC Hospitality Group LLC, a firm started by Rick Kelley. Kelley is the former owner of Mariah’s Restaurant, which got into its own financial trouble before Mills Family Realty negotiated a deal for the name and Kelley’s con-sulting.

That wasn’t the only restau-rant consulting fee that was paid, either. That Chicago firm, Creative Hospitality Associates, received more than $188,000 for its efforts in developing the short-lived res-taurants. The three fast-casual res-taurants closed in late September, and Mariah’s and 6-4-3 Sports Bar closed March 2 after liens totaling $2.4 million were filed against Mills Family Realty.

There was no development need-ed for Mariah’s menu that was pretty much the same as the origi-nal Mariah’s, and 6-4-3’s food was pretty standard bar food, except for the wings, which were excellent.

Apparently no one really paid attention to how the money was being spent as long as such expens-es fell within the sketchy parameters of “construction” and “operating expenses.” Now, there is specula-tion that such language in an agree-ment with Mills Family Realty wasn’t legal, which likely will be up to a court to decide. Industrial reve-

nue bonds are typically used for the actual construction of a building and fitting it out to industry standards.

The law doesn’t necessarily require governmental entities to have oversight of how such bonds are spent, but maybe that should change. Cities and counties have to be meticulous on how they spend taxpayers’ money.

In this case, taxpayers’ money – either through tax money recovered through Tax Increment Financing District revenues, or because the city or county will have to make up any shortfalls in those revenues – is being used to pay off the bonds. Shouldn’t that mean the same over-sight on spending should be in place?

If the county is able to make a deal to bring in someone else to operate the commercial wrap and restaurants, we hope that deal has more transparency than previous-ly has been the case.

As for the settlement agreement reached Friday between the coun-

ty, the authority and Mills Family Realty, our initial reaction is one of skepticism. It would appear that MFR will have no responsibility to pay off companies that say they are still owed millions for the actual construction of the project.

Did Mills Family Realty’s appar-ent casual spending on restaurant items lead to the deficit in funds many expected would be used for construction?

Likely.Was it illegal?That’s not for us to decide.We do want the facility to suc-

ceed so revenues produced by it, not taxpayers, will pay off the bonds. But we want to ensure the utmost caution and transparency is used in how future bonds are refinanced and with any agreement with the future operator/developer/manager of the commercial wrap.

Ultimately, a dose of hefty scru-tiny should be used anytime there is the remote possibility that taxpayer money could be used.

More scrutiny needed on wrap

We must keep our kids safe at summer camp.Today, Kentucky has one of the highest physi-

cal child abuse and child abuse death rates in the country. As candidate for attorney general, I am committed to building stronger families and safer communities.

Ending child abuse will be one of my top pri-orities.

I’m the proud dad of a 4-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son and I know how important sum-mer camps are for both parents and kids.

As part of our goal of ending child abuse in Kentucky, I’m urging parents to ask key ques-tions of summer camp staff so that they are fully informed about practices and procedures in place to prevent child abuse.

•Background checks — Kentucky law doesn’t require summer camps to conduct background checks, so parents should ensure that the camp conducts criminal and Child Protective Services background checks on staff and volunteers.

•Training — Camp staffers and volunteers should receive proper training in areas including child abuse prevention, emergency response, first aid and general safety.

•Employing best practices — Camps should have an employee conduct policy, and follow best practices such as avoiding private, one-on-one interactions between staffers and campers and requiring multiple unrelated adults to be in charge of kids.

•Staff to camper ratio — The American Camp Association recommends a staff to camper ratio ranging from one staffer for every five overnight campers ages 5 or younger to 1 staffer per 10 overnight campers ages 15 to 18 years.

•Discipline — Camps should be prepared to handle unpredictable behavior with a clear disci-pline policy that prohibits physical or emotional abuse.

Andy Beshear Louisville

— Beshear is the Democratic candidate for attorney general of Kentucky.

Pay attention tocamp procedures for

child protection

THE DAILY NEWS

Page 2C – Sunday, June 7, 2015

OPINIONNEWS MAKERS

bgdailynews.com

ReaderC2

After what our community has endured in the past few months involving multiple problems with Hitcents Park Plaza, it is reassuring to know that in the near future, an agreement might come to fruition to put someone with considerable knowledge of restaurants and real estate into the wrap and hopefully make it successful.

Bowling Green Hot Rods owner Jerry Katzoff has been in negotiations with the county to assume the role of develop-er and has presented the county with plans for the wrap. Katzoff said he hopes to reopen Mariah’s and 6-4-3 restaurants in the next 30 to 45 days and would like to open them during the base-ball season. He said he would like to rename the garage wrap Stadium Park Plaza.

Mills Family Realty was pre-viously in charge of operating five restaurants in the wrap and

was not successful. Three fast casual restaurants closed last fall and Mariah’s and 6-4-3 closed in March.

Hopefully, a formal agreement can be reached soon so Katzoff can gain access and get the res-taurants operational. Katzoff said this is his first priority, which it should be. It is crucial to get these up and running and hopefully financially success-ful. He says he isn’t sure about the other three restaurants and doesn’t think it is a good idea to overload an area with too many.

He’s probably correct on his

assessment.Katzoff also says he is inter-

ested in completing the wrap of the parking garage with apart-ments on the College Street side of the structure. That is some-thing we believe many in the community would like to see. The completion of these apart-ments would give the parking structure a finished look and, more important, provide much needed housing for people who want to live downtown.

“I think it completes the proj-ect,” Katzoff said. “The more people downtown, the more

people that go to the restaurants, the more people that go to the games. So it’s something we’d like to do rather quickly.”

His comments make a lot of sense and reveal a person deter-mined to complete the wrap and get things moving in a positive direction after a period of well-publicized problems.

Katzoff said his second prior-ity will be getting tenants into the rest of the office space. This would also be very beneficial to the wrap. It is also reassur-ing to learn Katzoff will work with Chandler Real Estate Services to manage the office space. Katzoff has worked with Chandler on Jennings Creek Apartments in Bowling Green, which he owns, and it’s wise to work with Chandler on this project. Chandler has a proven track record in real estate devel-opment and management and would be an asset on a project

which, because of its size, needs professional management.

We believe Katzoff is mak-ing a smart business decision in keeping on Jodi Fleming at Mariah’s. Fleming is the face of Mariah’s and has been for a long time. She too will be an asset to Katzoff once he gains access to the building and begins the process of reopening the restau-rants.

We do wish Katzoff the best in making this project succeed as it is in this community’s best interest.

We would, however, be remiss if we didn’t insist that when this agreement is reached, there is more transparency, oversight and care in drafting the terms of the agreement than was the case with Mills Family Realty by those in positions of respon-sibility.

Our community will be better served when this happens.

Good things could be coming for wrapTHE DAILY NEWS

A reader accused me of disparaging the Kentucky Sports Radio Republican guberna-torial primary debate in a recent column. That was not my intent.

The KSR debate was interesting and reveal-ing. It probably affected the election’s out-come.

I applaud KSR and every other organization that did a debate or panel during the campaign. All good faith efforts to inform vot-ers about candidates and their positions are praiseworthy. And a little entertainment is OK, too.

My point was that neither the candidates’ published platforms and statements nor any of the debates or forums in the prima-ry campaign provided as much depth and detail as certain com-plex issues – like state pensions – require and deserve.

That is not a criticism of KSR or others. It is a reality-based observation offered in hopes of continuously improving the Kentucky cam-paign and election process.

To illustrate my argument, I referred to what was probably the most remembered or talked about part of the KSR debate. The can-didates answered a question about whether they would hire University of Kentucky bas-ketball coach John Calipari or University of Louisville coach Rick Pitino.

I have absolutely no problem with the ques-tion. The answers indeed told us something about the candidates.

But the fact remains that voters went to the poll knowing which coach their potential next governor would want drawing up Xs and Os during a late game timeout, but probably not so much about what that person would do to solve the gargantuan pension problem that

plagues the state.It is not an “either-or” situation. Various

types of debates and discussions can serve distinct purposes during a campaign.

Still, can’t we do better at moving can-didates beyond scripted talking points and superficial statements to demonstrating real

understanding of difficult issues? Candidates ought to be made to not only explain their positions, but defend them against well-informed, challenging and sus-tained questioning.

This takes time, of course. A nominal one-hour debate divided among multiple candidates and covering several topics is inevita-bly going to sacrifice some sub-stance and just scratch the sur-face.

Scott Lasley, political science professor at Western Kentucky University, told Kentucky Educational Television’s Renee Shaw recently that debates allow-

ing one or two minutes for answers are “the most overrated things we go through.” He adds, “The problem is not in who is asking the questions; it is in how long you give people to answer them.”

Here is a modest and not altogether original proposal for a different kind of debate during the general election campaign for Kentucky governor. Each of Kentucky’s six congressio-nal districts should host a 75-minute debate dedicated to a single subject.

Each one would have a neutral moderator and two panelists. Do not limit the latter to the usual suspects from Kentucky’s political press corps, but include experts who have points of view.

This trio of interlocutors would question the candidates and follow up at length. Such

long-form dialogue should involve longer blocks of time to allow, or compel, the candi-dates to show their mastery (or lack thereof) of the big issues, provide the specific details of their proposals and respond to tough ques-tions they can easily evade in conventional debate settings.

These events would be more like the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 and less like the game show Jeopardy.

Stage the First District debate in Paducah’s magnificent Carson Center. Dedicate it to the topic of Kentucky’s tax, revenue and spend-ing situation.

Murray-based former CN2 anchor Ryan Alessi would make a great moderator. Put Jason Bailey of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in Berea and Jim Waters from the Bluegrass Institute on the panel.

Hold the Second District debate at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green on the topic of state pensions. My beloved alma mater Centre College, also in the Second District, has proposed to host a debate but is unfortunately aligned with the pro-Obam-acare special interest group AARP that is anathema to many conservatives.

John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader would be a good moderator. Jim Carroll of Kentucky Government Retirees and Lowell Reese of Kentucky Roll Call would be good panelists.

The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts in Louisville would be a fine site for the Third District debate. Since the state’s largest city is a national medical hub, make this forum’s subject matter health issues and Medicaid.

Have Louisville surgeon and KET host Dr. Wayne Tuckson moderate. Stephan F. Gohmann, BB&T Professor of Free Enterprise at the University of Louisville College of Business and Ja’Nel Johnson of

WFPL News would be strong panelists.The Fourth District debate should deal with

social issues. Hold it at the beautiful, his-toric Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Covington.

For a candid, civil and lively discussion, have Terry Meiners of WHAS radio mod-erate. Have Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville and Brad Bigney, pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Florence, on the panel.

In eastern Kentucky’s Fifth District, the debate at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg should be about economic development and jobs. Bill Goodman of KET would be, as always, an informed moderator. For panelists, have Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, and Dr. John Garen, Gatton endowed pro-fessor of economics at the University of Kentucky.

The final debate, at the Lexington Opera House in the Sixth District, would deal with education. Have outgoing Kentucky educa-tion commissioner Terry Holliday moder-ate it with education reporters Toni Konz of WDRB and Linda Blackford of the Lexington Herald-Leader as panelists.

These are just suggestions. There are many other outstanding possible venues, modera-tors and panelists.

Would long policy discussions like this draw big audiences? Maybe not.

Kentucky campaigns now include a lot of good shorter form discussions, from KSR to KET and many others.

It is nothing against any of them to wish that Kentucky could have even better, more informative campaigns.

— John David Dyche is a Louisville attor-ney and a political commentator for WDRB.com. His email is jddyche@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter@jddyche.

A modest Kentucky debates proposalFormats that produce longer, more detailed answers would serve state well

JOHN DAVIDDYCHE

Syndicated

columnist

Editorial boardPipes Gaines, co-publisher

Andy Dennis, managing editorSteve Gaines, editor/editorial page

editorRobyn Minor, city editor

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher from 1922 to

1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor from 1946 to

1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947 to 2007.Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

The Daily News

Letters must be 300 wordsor less and are subject to

editing for brevity.Please include name, address and

phone numberon emails and letters.

Only names and cities of residence

will be published. The Daily News reserves the

right to reject any letter.•••

813 College St. Bowling Green, KY 42102letters@bgdailynews.com

leTTers policy

“I want to want my husband, it is that simple.For us, flibanserin is a relationship-saving and life-changing drug.”

— Amanda Parrish, a mother of four from Nashville, after government experts recommended approval for a pill to boost sexual desire in women.

Katzoff also says he is interested incompleting the wrap of the parking

garage with apartments on the College Street side of the structure. That issomething we believe many in the

community would like to see.

Page 2C - Sunday, June 21, 2015

OPINIONNEWS MAKERS

bgdailynews.com

ReaderC2

Editorial boardPipes Gaines, co-publisher

Andy Dennis, managing editorSteve Gaines, editor/editorial page

editorRobyn Minor, city editor

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher from 1922

to 1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor from 1946 to

1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947 to 2007.Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

The Daily NewsLetters must be 300 wordsor less and are subject to

editing for brevity.Please include name, address

and phone numberon emails and letters.

Only names and cities of residence

will be published. The Daily News reserves the

right to reject any letter.813 College St.

Bowling Green, KY 42102letters@bgdailynews.com

leTTers policy

American leaders are agonizing over what to do about ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Reporters ask if the situation is a “quag-mire.” It is an appropriate time to look back at events a half-cen-tury ago that produced the quintessential quagmire, the Vietnam War.

Fifty years ago, Under Secretary of State George Ball wrote three key docu-ments about Vietnam and sent two of them to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Earlier that year, Johnson, acting pursuant to the broad author-ity Congress granted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, had sent the first U.S. com-bat troops, 3,500 Marines, to join the 23,000 American advisers already in Vietnam.

The United States was conducting a bombing campaign against communist North Vietnam. By summer, Johnson was deciding whether to escalate the fight by deploying many more American forces as the military requested and sev-eral of his advisers recommended.

On June 18, 1965, Ball sent Johnson a memo that began with a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.” LBJ’s “most difficult continuing challenge,” Ball said, was “to keep control of policy and prevent the momentum of events from taking command.”

Ball put it bluntly: “For the fact is – and we can no longer avoid it – that in spite of our intentions to the contrary, we are drifting toward a major war – that nobody wants.” He asserted “we do not yet have enough experience with the direct employment of American combat forces to appraise our chances for mili-tary success in the South.”

Thus, Ball proposed a “test period” during which the U.S. would increase its forces to 100,000, “but no more.” He recognized that by doing so “we are beginning a new war – the United States directly against the Viet Cong,” the communist guerrillas in South Vietnam.

Ball recommended this test because he suspected “we may not be able to fight the war successfully enough – even with 500,000 Americans in South (Vietnam).” Therefore, “Before we

commit an endless flow of forces …, we must have more evidence than we now have that our troops will not bog down in the jungles and rice paddies – while

we slowly blow the country to pieces.”

During the test period, Ball advised preparing plans for – as the results warranted – further escala-tion, a diplomatic offensive and a solution “short of the ultimate U.S. objectives that can be attained with-out the substantial further commitment of troops.” The latter two options, he said, “should be regarded as plans for cutting losses and eventually disengaging

from an untenable situation.”Later that month, as Johnson’s team

conducted a series of meetings, Ball composed a second paper. It was writ-ten, he said, “on the premise that we are losing the war in Vietnam” and that “we should undertake to either extricate our-selves” or confine and reduce the scope of our commitment.

Ball warned: “This is our last clear chance to make this decision.” With fur-ther troop deployments, he observed, “a substantial number of Americans will be killed,” and that “will make it much harder and more costly to extricate our-selves or reduce our commitments.”

What was required, according to Ball, was “a hard-nosed judgment as to the relative costs and dangers to America, both short-term and long-term” of esca-lation vs. de-escalation. So he offered a “plan for cutting our losses.” The first step was a “firm decision” by Johnson “that he will not commit United States land forces to combat in South Vietnam.”

“In our anxiety to build up support for the struggle in South Vietnam, we have tended to exaggerate the consequences for U.S. power and prestige of a tacti-cal withdrawal,” Ball said. He stressed he was not suggesting the U.S. “should abdicate leadership in the Cold War,” but should prudently “select the terrain on which to stand and fight.”

“Politically,” Ball said, “South Vietnam is a lost cause,” and “the terrain in South Vietnam could not be worse” being comprised of “jungles and rice

paddies” ill-suited for “modern arms.”He concluded: “In my view, a deep

commitment of United States forced in a land war in South Vietnam would be a catastrophic error. If ever there was an occasion for a tactical withdrawal, this is it.”

Ball’s memo was poorly received by LBJ’s team. He nonetheless revised it and sent a final, incredibly prescient, version to the president July 1.

It began by telling Johnson “no one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong or even force them to the confer-ence table on our terms no matter how many hundred thousand white foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy.”

He added, “No one had demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerrilla war – which is at the same time a civil war between Asians – in jungle terrain in the midst of a population that refuses cooperation to the white forces and thus provides a great intelligence advantage to the other side.”

Ball warned against involvement “so great that we cannot – without national humiliation – stop short of achieving our complete objectives” and said he though “humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives – even after we had paid terrible costs.”

Accordingly, Ball outlined a mili-tary and political program for getting out of Vietnam. Johnson rejected it, and July 28 announced an escalation to 125,000 troops, a doubling of draft calls, and a decision that, “We will stand in Vietnam.” Ten years and over 50,000 lives later, we fell in Vietnam.

Neither this history, nor that of appeasement leading up to World War II, is a substitute for decision-making about American policy now. But it is well to note Ball’s dissent 50 years ago, hope similarly perceptive people are advising President Barack Obama and pray for our leaders as they make fateful decisions.

— John David Dyche is a Louisville attorney and a political commentator for WDRB.com. His email is jddyche@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter@jddyche.

Message delivered, not heededFifty years ago, statesman warned LBJ about Vietnam escalation

JOHN DAVIDDYCHE

Syndicated

columnist

State Auditor Adam Edelen brought a welcome examination into the dealings of the commercial wrap of the Eighth Avenue parking garage in Block 6 of the Tax Increment Financing district, known as Hitcents Park Plaza.

There are too many unanswered questions regard-ing this matter, and we believe the public has a right to all the answers.

On Wednesday, Edelen announced he is look-ing into how money was spent on the commercial wrap. Edelen and his auditors will be looking at the use of industrial revenue bonds, how the deal came together and the lack of oversight and transparency of the project.

Preliminary work by auditors has begun to help establish a scope of work for the examination.

Edelen called the wrap project a “muddled morass” and said there are many important ques-tions to be answered.

We couldn’t agree more with Edelen on both of those comments.

This project has had insufficient transparency and oversight from the beginning.

We don’t believe we are speaking out of turn, as local elected officials also have said there was not sufficient oversight over the project.

All these problems as a whole make Edelen’s audit that much more important.

Edelen appears to be a very intelligent and serious person, and we take him at his word he will not rush this audit and that he won’t sacrifice thoroughness for speed.

This is a very complex matter. There are hundreds upon hundreds of documents Edelen and his audi-tors must go through to put all of the pieces of this bizarre puzzle together and form their conclusions.

We are quite aware of the complexity of this mat-ter. This newspaper has gone through all of the documents pertaining to the wrap project we have acquired through open records requests. We would add that obtaining those records from the appropri-ate agency was not always an easy task.

It is encouraging to know that officials at the audi-tor’s office have spoken extensively with Bowling Green Mayor Bruce Wilkerson and Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon.

Edelen’s office has stressed that local coopera-tion into this investigation will be key during the examination.

We anticipate Wilkerson, Buchanon and other elected officials will cooperate fully with this audit.

Edelen said it best: “You can’t have accountabil-ity without transparency.”

We say amen to that.These words are fitting given the situation our

community has had to deal with for the past several months.

Answers are needed to everything relating to the wrap project. We believe Edelen will deliver those answers and make them public after a thorough investigation, and if, indeed, he does find wrongdo-ing by anyone involved with this project, we would hope those people would be held accountable.

We hope no one is at fault, but only time will tell.

Audit ofwrap much welcomed

THE DAILY NEWS

“Of all cities, in Charleston, to have a horrible hateful person go intothe church and kill people there to pray and worship with each other is something

that is beyond any comprehension and is not explained.”— Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., after a white gunman allegedly opened fire

in a historic black church in South Carolina, killing nine people.

The curious case of Rachel Dolezal has sparked furious com-mentary about her deceit, arrogance and narcissism.

But this is a reminder race is but a social construct. As geneticists told us years ago, there really isn’t any such thing as race.

Human beings are 99.9 percent genetically identical. As Duana Fullwiley, a medical anthropologist, has put it, “There is no genetic basis for race.”

Still, human beings are deeply invested in the concept. Our lizard brains are attuned to superficial dif-ferences. Tens of thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens depended on their ability to distinguish friend from foe in a flash. If another crea-ture standing upright and using opposable thumbs looked like me, he was a friend. If he didn’t, well, whack him with a stick.

Unhappily, we’ve not evolved much beyond that.

But primal identification of “the other” is no longer nec-essary for survival. In fact, in the 21st century, it impedes human prog-ress.

Look no further than Wednesday’s massa-cre at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. A man opened fire during prayer meeting and killed nine people. Police have identified the suspect as a young white man, Dylann Storm Roof, who allegedly spewed racist stereotypes and championed white supremacy.

That’s one of the more horrific examples of the racism fueled by fear and hatred of the other, but it

stands out only for its extremes. Every day, discrimination over-whelms routine encounters.

And I’d be remiss if I suggested that bigotry is a habit practiced only by whites. While insti-tutional racism is the province of the power-ful – and, in the United States, the powerful are still mostly white – dis-crimination based on difference is a human tradition, passed on from one generation to the next, among black families, brown fami-

lies, tan families, pink families. So Dolezal shook us up. We

couldn’t tell by looking. If she could be so authentically “black” as to fool constituents at the Spokane chapter of the NAACP despite the fact that

she was born “white,” doesn’t that tell us something about the superfi-ciality of these differences?

Now, I’m not excusing the lady’s lies. You can hardly champion social justice while standing on a founda-tion of fraud. There is no excuse for her mendacity, no matter how noble she believed her motives to be.

But her story ought to remind us just how flimsy this business of race really is. Even “black culture” and “white culture” are permeable con-cepts, easily penetrated.

When I was younger, stereotypes that attempted to limit black accom-plishments were common. The list of our supposed shortcomings was long – and absurd. Black people couldn’t be distance runners (did anyone tell the Kenyans?), couldn’t play tennis (you’ve heard of Serena Williams) or play golf (well, Tiger Woods used to). And certainly we

weren’t smart enough to be astro-physicists, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

And while black Americans didn’t have the cultural cachet to invent a long list of limits for whites, we responded with a few stereotypes of our own. As just one example, we believed that white teens couldn’t dance. They didn’t have rhythm. That myth, too, has been explod-ed by any number of young white rockers – and multiple contestants on those competitive talent shows.

Humankind is not yet ready to acknowledge what science stands ready to teach us: Race does not exist. We seem to have a primal need to divide, to separate, to exclude. Categories provide us some strange comfort.

But the race-tinged sagas playing out on the evening news ought to force us to think about the ways in which those categories limit us all.

Dolezal’s deceit shows culture a valuable truth

CYNTHIA TUCKER

Syndicated

columnist

THE DAILY NEWS

Page 4A – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 NEWS MAKERS

bgdailynews.com

“In order to best manage your talent, you have to pick the best people who can perform to the standards that we have established. If you can meet

the standards that we’ve established, then you should be able to perform in that (position). And I think that’s where we’re headed.”

— Gen. Ray Odierno, a former Army chief of staff, hinting that the Army will allow women to seek infantry and armor jobs as well.

After months of uncertainty, it seems the downtown development known as the wrap is getting back on track.

Hitcents has given notice that it will terminate its lease Sept. 25 and will move out of the building. We believe this is a positive step for the project as it eliminates some uncertainty as to how much longer Hitcents would have continued to occupy the space.

Recently, the Bowling Green City Commission, Warren County Fiscal Court and Warren County Downtown Economic Development Authority all approved an interlocal agree-

ment that will allow the project to move forward under a new proj-ect developer, Bowling Green Hot Rods owner Jerry Katzoff. The agreement calls for the county to issue $30 million in industrial revenue bonds to pay off debts to unpaid contractors and to finish the development, formerly known as Hitcents Park Plaza. The devel-opment will be renamed Stadium Park Plaza.

Although final approval is need-ed by the Kentucky Department of Local Government, local officials are confident the agreement will be approved.

We hope it is done in a timely

manner, as moving forward with the project is exactly what is need-ed at this point. This unfortunate situation has dragged on far too long, and it has been quite obvious for some time now that new blood was needed to finish this project and get restaurants Mariah’s and 6-4-3 sports bar, which have been closed since March, up and run-ning again.

Katzoff has worked diligently on getting the restaurants reopened. Mariah’s will open Tuesday, and 6-4-3 will open soon. Katzoff has also said he intends to finish the College Street side of the wrap with housing, which will be a huge

asset to our downtown.These are all positive signs that

Katzoff is serious about finish-ing this project. That is what this city wants, and from all accounts it appears Katzoff will deliv-er on his word. It is also signifi-cant that Katzoff is using some of his own money to complete the wrap.

We as a community have a vested interest in seeing this project com-pleted. Has all of the headache that has come with it made it a pleasur-able experience? Of course not.

But at the end of the day, it is reassuring to know that we have a new project developer on the build-

ing who has a proven track record as a successful businessman.

After the nightmare our city has had to endure over the past several months, it is good to know the res-taurants are about to be reopened, new condominiums may be built in the near future to add living spac-es to our downtown and someone who knows what he is doing is in charge of finally completing the wrap project.

We’re glad all parties involved came together for the common good of our community and worked diligently to find a solution to an ongoing problem that plagued our city.

Wrap appears back on track

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher

from 1922 to 1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor

from 1946 to 1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947 to 2007.Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

Editorial board

Pipes Gaines, co-publisherSteve Gaines, editor

Robyn Minor, city editor• • •

Mallard Filmore

Letters must be 300 words or less and are subject to editing for brevity.Please include name, address and

phone number on emails and letters. Only names and cities of residence

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right to reject any letter.813 College St.

Bowling Green, KY 42102letters@bgdailynews.com

lEttErs policy

Here is a great idea: Let’s have everybody carry a gun.

Details can be worked out later, maybe involving tax credits or something to help everybody get a firearm along with some ammuni-tion. Imagine how comfortable you would feel sitting in a dark movie theater with your handgun in your lap, knowing that all the people in the rows around you also were armed. No more of the fear people feel at the movies now!

There are some potential prob-lems with my plan. For example, statistics show that about half of the population has an intelligence below the median level, and we all know from math and English class-es at school how hard it is for most people (including that lower half) to remember anything they are taught. By itself this could impact the effec-tiveness of gun-safety training.

Also, if you follow the news, you know that 10 or 15 kids get shot every week by accident in the U.S. handling or playing with guns they shouldn’t be able to get their hands on. Nearly half of them die.

There is also the vexing issue of crazy people. We have seen what some of these bozos can do when they get their hands on a semi-auto-matic.

So there are some issues we may have to address, but they are not anything new. I am sure we can deal with them in the future like we always have.

So call your congressman! Tell him to stop quarreling about how to pay for road repair or how to not pay for women’s health care, and to get behind a gun bill that we would like to see.

David DicksonBowling Green

Maybe everyone needs a handgun

MAILBOX

Fifty years have passed since the Watts riots, a disaster that brought death, destruction and an unexpect-ed, although long overdue, boost to the value of racial diversity in newsrooms.

Days of looting and shootings in the Los Angeles neighborhood resulted in 34 deaths and a spur to white flight from inner cities.

Unlike the 50th anniversary of the voting rights march in Selma, Ala., and other recent landmark commemorations, Watts offers us no larger-than-life heroes or giant steps of human progress.

Bad things began to happen in Watts on Aug. 11. That’s when black motorist Marquette Frye, 21, was arrested for drunken driving in a routine traffic stop that quickly turned into a riot.

It wasn’t the first major riot of the period. And it wasn’t the largest either. Other conflagrations would

erupt in Chicago, Detroit and other cit-ies, culminating in the wave of more than 100 riots that followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

But Watts stands out in many memories as a pivotal event in shap-ing the polarized racial and political land-scape through which Americans struggle today.

Coming on the heels of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historic civil rights bills and the early days of his “war on poverty,” Watts helped spur a conservative backlash that continues to push back against similar progressive reforms today.

You can even hear echoes of the

Watts debate in today’s “Black Lives Matter” protests over fatal encounters between unarmed black men and white police offi-cers.

The Watts riots caught the media with their diversity down. Suddenly called upon to report and explain events in a part of town with which they were unfamiliar, editors and news directors had a revelation: It might be

a good idea for them to hire a few reporters and photographers who could be sent out to “the ghetto” without looking too conspicuous.

Most memorably, the Los Angeles Times had no black report-ers or photographers, like most other American newspapers. So

they deputized Robert Richardson, a 24-year-old African-American messenger for the newspaper’s classified ad department.

Richardson grabbed a pen, a notebook and a handful of dimes for pay phones in those pre-cell-phone days to provide eyewitness accounts from behind the color line. Despite his lack of experi-ence, Richardson’s reports were sufficiently compelling to help the Times win a Pulitzer Prize, jour-nalism’s highest award, for its riot coverage.

Richardson’s work meant a lot to me and other students of color who were considering journalism careers. We had almost no other vis-ible role models in the mainstream media. Each of the three television networks had its one black reporter in that year, for which each net-work patted itself on the back. But America deserved more.

Three years later, the president’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, chaired by former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, would make that same point about the hiring of “Negro journalists.” The same also needed to be said of Hispanic journalists and other jour-nalists of color – and vastly under-represented women journalists.

Times have changed. These days old media are less worried about building diversity in the Internet age than with holding the diver-sity they have. Yet new media are opening vast new opportunities for young aspiring journalists, if they pursue them as doggedly as they pursue good stories.

As my grandmother advised me back in the bad old days of all-white newsrooms, “Just prepare yourself. When the doors of opportunity open up, be ready to step inside.”

Wise words still.

Watts changed many things, including journalism

CLARENCEPAGE

Syndicated

columnist

The best thing about giving advice to Kentucky Democrats is that they will not take it. They would rather lose than make changes recom-mended by a Republican.

Nonetheless, here are some things state D e m o c r a t s should do to stave off political extinction. If they stubbornly cling to the people and policies of the past, however, their days of political relevance are few and dwindling fast.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Even though new House leader-ship elections are not sched-uled until the 2017 legisla-tive session, rank-and-file House Democrats should revolt now and demand immediate changes.

Oust Greg Stumbo as state speaker of the House. Stumbo’s shtick has grown stale and he personifies the old days and, worse, dis-credited ways.

Elevate the respected

John Tilley of H o p k i n s v i l l e to Speaker. He would be a dis-tinct improve-ment in both style and sub-stance from Stumbo.

D e m o c r a t s should bring even more new blood into their House lead-ership team. Sweeping out the old guard

and shaking things up would show voters that you hear them loud and clear on changing the stale status quo.

Would such major change be risky right before next year’s elections that could transfer control of the House to Republicans? Yes, but desperate times call for des-perate measures and doing nothing is even riskier.

Without bold action, the state House will soon be a lost cause for Democrats like the state Senate already is. Registration trends and voting patterns portend a dependably Republican red state at all levels, and soon.

Do a comprehensive

reconsideration of every policy position and inter-est group. Instead of sim-ply digging in on issues and doubling-down on the same supporters, conduct a ground-up review of every-thing the party stands for and every source of its fund-ing.

If this does not produce some significant shifts, you are not doing it right. You must quickly convince vot-ers that you are not your grandparents’ Democrats.

Offer some original and specific policy proposals on big issues. In the recent race for governor, victori-ous Republican Matt Bevin reaped rewards for hav-ing ideas, whereas defeated Democrat Jack Conway’s “platform” was a pile of pal-lid mush.

Make your case based on data and do not rely on dem-agogic appeals to class war-fare and emotion as you so long have. Remember how Conway paid a price for fail-ing to advance an energetic, information-filled defense of expanded Medicaid and the state health exchange.

You are perceived, rightly, as a party that puts primary emphasis on government.

Your every utterance should emphasize creating growth and jobs in the private sector and raising the disposable income of Kentuckians.

Sure, keep standing up for the forgotten and pow-erless people, but do not let that become a reflexive habit of wanting more money to do more of the same. Good intentions are important, but results matter even more.

Do not wage an obstruc-tionist war against Bevin. He won a mandate, so honor it as much as you can while respectfully offering alterna-tives on which you can wage next year’s House races.

Declare – formally and literally – your indepen-dence from the national Democratic Party. Do not fall into the trap of unthinkingly endorsing Hillary Clinton for president or bringing her or Bill here to campaign for your U.S. Senate candidate next year.

The Clintons may be marginally more popular in Kentucky than President Barack Obama, but they are utterly ineffective in Kentucky now. To con-firm this, you need only look at last year’s Senate race in which Republican

Mitch McConnell destroyed Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes despite seemingly daily Clinton visits to the commonwealth.

In the Senate campaign, find a charismatic personali-ty who can run to the right of Republican incumbent Rand Paul on national security issues. Your candidate will also need to be able to spell out the real-world impacts of Paul’s balanced budget and tax proposals.

To stand any chance at all your candidate will have to run an imaginative, inter-esting and unconventional campaign. It needs to start soon.

Republicans have recently won big races with indepen-dent, original outsiders like Paul and Bevin. Surely there is someone like that some-where among the state’s 1.685 million registered Democrats.

Democrats will undoubt-edly ignore this unsolicited advice mainly because of its source, but also because of its difficulty. Too bad for them and for Kentucky.

— John David Dyche is a Louisville attorney and a political commentator for WDRB.com. His email is jddyche@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter @jddyche.

bgdailynews.comOPINION

NEWS MAKERSPage 2C – Sunday, November 15, 2015

ReaderC2

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher

from 1922 to 1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor

from 1946 to 1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947 to 2007.Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

Pipes Gaines, co-publisherSteve Gaines, editorJoe Imel, director

of media operationsDaniel Pike, managing editor

Robyn Minor, city editor• • •

Letters must be 300 words or less and are subject to editing for brevity.Please include name, address and

phone number on emails and letters. Only names and cities of residence

will be published. The Daily News reserves the

right to reject any letter.813 College St.

Bowling Green, KY 42102letters@bgdailynews.com

Letters poLicy

editoriaL board

An offer of free advice for Kentucky’s Democratic Party

JOHN DAVIDDYCHE

Syndicated

columnist

It became clear many months ago that the operation and handling of the commercial wrap of the downtown parking garage, former-ly known as Hitcents Park Plaza, had major problems.

Contractors filed liens on the property in February for money they said they were owed for work on the wrap. Warren County and Warren County Downtown Economic Development Authority subsequently sued Mills Family Realty, which previously served as the wrap’s developer. Since then, Warren County, the city of Bowling Green and the authority have worked to settle those and related issues. The county is slat-ed to issue $30 million in revenue bonds to fund a settlement with the contractors, pay off existing bonds and complete the wrap – now called Stadium Park Plaza – with Bowling Green Hot Rods owner Jerry Katzoff as developer. Action to make this official was completed

in the past few weeks by the three entities.

Months later, the public still doesn’t have many answers as we await a final report from state Auditor Adam Edelen’s office.

Edelen, who lost re-election to Republican Mike Harmon on Nov. 3, announced in June that his office would conduct a special examina-tion of the project, including the use of bond proceeds. We applaud-ed Edelen at the time for launch-ing an investigation into this matter

as an investigation was definitely needed.

Edelen’s communication’s direc-tor, Stephanie Hoelscher, recently said that they are nearing comple-tion of the field work and have said this is the most complex exam they have conducted in four years. Hoelscher doesn’t know if they will have the audit completed before the end of the year.

Whether finished or not before Harmon takes office in January, we applaud Edelen for taking on this

investigation. Edelen has proven to be a capable auditor who took up this probe with several goals in mind, such as finding out what went wrong with the project, deter-mining if money was misappropri-ated or misused – and if so, who was responsible – and whether there was any unlawful activity related to the project.

We may not get those answers before Edelen’s successor takes office, but it was reassuring to hear that Harmon has said he will

probably continue the investigation when he takes over.

Harmon has been briefed by Edelen’s office about the wrap probe. Harmon’s expressed will-ingness to finish the probe is some-thing we should all get behind.

We know there was insuffi-cient oversight over the wrap and because of that, taxpayer money was possibly used inappropriately, which certainly warrants the com-pletion of this investigation.

The citizens of this community deserve answers as to what actual-ly happened at the former Hitcents Park Plaza. They need to know whether taxpayer money was mis-used and, if so, who was respon-sible.

That is what we hope Harmon will deliver to us, assuming he has to finish the audit.

Our citizens have waited a long time for answers and look forward to either Edelen or Harmon provid-ing them.

New auditor should continue wrap probeTHE DAILY NEWS

Investigation too important to be lost in transition shuffle

Edelen took up this probe with several goals in mind, such as finding out what went wrong with the project, determining if

money was misappropriated or misused and whether there was any unlawful activity related to the project. We may not get

those answers before Edelen’s successor takes office, but it was reassuring to hear that Harmon has said he will probably

continue the investigation.

“It was embarrassing. It was hurtful. It was scary. It crossed my mind that my 30-year career here was a failure.”

— Interim University of Missouri system President Mike Middleton, a one-time civil rights activist who came out of retirement to accept the

position amid race-related protests that led to the resignations last week of the university’s president and chancellor.

bgdailynews.com

Mallard Fillmore

OPINIONNEWS MAKERSPage 4A – Thursday, December 31, 2015

MainA4

Founded by John B. Gaines.C.M. Gaines, publisher

from 1922 to 1947.J. Ray Gaines, editor

from 1946 to 1993.John B. Gaines, publisher/president

from 1947 to 2007.Daily News founded in 1882.

Democrat foundedin 1854.

Messenger founded in 1908.Consolidated Jan. 1, 1917.

Pipes Gaines, co-publisherSteve Gaines, editorJoe Imel, director

of media operationsDaniel Pike, managing editor

Robyn Minor, city editor• • •

Letters must be 300 words or less and are subject to editing for brevity.Please include name, address and

phone number on emails and letters. Only names and cities of residence

will be published. The Daily News reserves the

right to reject any letter.813 College St.

Bowling Green, KY 42102letters@bgdailynews.com

Letters poLicy

editoriaL board

The great Scottish poet Robert Burns penned the memorable line, “To see ourselves as others see us.” How must people in the rest of America, and espe-cially those thinking of visiting or moving here, see Louisville now?

The answer seems obvious. Louisville looks, and is, violent and unsafe.

Last weekend, a series of what some are tactfully calling “disturbances” shut down Mall St. Matthews, which is located in Louisville’s relatively affluent East End. Rather than rely on reports by local news outlets, let’s look at how a national network described the incident for the rest of the world.

On its website, NBC News described “hours-long chaos” in which “chain-reaction brawls involving up to 2,000 people erupt-ed in one of Kentucky’s largest malls Saturday night, forcing the entire mall and businesses in the surrounding area to shut down.”

A police spokesperson is quoted as saying, “This was a riot. It was crazy.” Yet police apparently made no arrests and arranged public for transportation home for the hooli-gans.

Some question whether the incident at the mall was real-ly all that bad. Even if it was not a riot and was smaller than reported, however, it was still bad enough to require a massive police response and shut down the mall on the Saturday night after Christmas.

This outbreak of chaos comes near the end of a year in which Louisville’s mur-

der rate has spiked. According to WFPL News, as of Christmas Eve there had been 85 homicides in Louisville this year.

That report continues, “The aver-age annual homicide count dat-ing back to 1970 is 63, data show. Police data also show the homicide rate so far this year is 11.1 murders per 100,000 residents – more than double the FBI-calculated national rate in 2014.”

WFPL also reports that no arrest has been made in nearly half of Louisville’s homicide cases this year. High profile unsolved mur-ders from prior years include a barn worker at Churchill Downs and a Kroger employee gunned down as he left work in St. Matthews.

Arrests were made in one of the

year’s most highly publicized kill-ings. A trio’s violent crime spree on Kentucky Derby Day culminated with the murder of a Canadian visi-tor who was walking back to his hotel from Churchill Downs after the city’s signature sporting event.

The mall mayhem brought back memories of last year’s mob ram-page in downtown Louisville. The city begrudgingly took some actions after that orgy of indiscrimi-nate destruction and violence, but there was apparently not much, if any, accountability or punishment for the responsible parties.

There is also increasing concern about safety in Louisville’s public schools. A Jefferson County Public Schools spokesperson recently stated that, “In fiscal (year) 2015, JCPS teachers filed 107 reports of assaults or threats by students. Of those, teachers chose not to pros-ecute in 67 cases, 15 cases were prosecuted by JCPS security, and 25 were prosecuted by local law enforcement.”

WDRB education reporter Antoinette Konz recently wrote that the problem is not limited to classrooms. “Fights on buses have soared this school year, according to a WDRB News review of JCPS data,” Konz reported. “Through the first 70 days of this school year, there have been 306 student fights on buses – a 31 percent increase

from the 234 student fights on buses last year.”

Some of these situations predict-ably elicited calls to hold parents responsible. That is fine as far as it goes, but unfortunately parent-hood as many of us conceive of or remember it is increasingly a quaint, endangered and often whol-ly inapplicable concept.

Race is also a big part of some people’s reactions to the episodes described above. We neither can nor should ignore objective facts in this regard, and nobody should be demonized as either racist or anti-police for merely dealing in hard data.

For myriad reasons, some social conditions that contribute to increased violence are indeed more severe in minority communities. But it is a big mistake to believe these maladies are somehow con-fined there.

In his 2012 book “Coming Apart,” social scientist Charles Murray made a compelling case that developments among America’s non-Latino whites during the peri-od from 1960-2010 had created a “new lower class” that was expe-riencing the “unraveling of daily life in small ways and large.” He showed the decline in two “found-ing virtues” – industriousness and honesty – and two institutions that promote them – marriage and reli-

gion – in arguing that America is experiencing a dangerous and widespread social disintegration.

Other big cities are suffering from the same sort of problems as Louisville, if not worse. But Louisville is our city.

Law, order and public safety might not be nearly as interesting for a city to pursue as are some other subjects. But law, order and public safety are fundamentals without which ambitious transfor-mations cannot succeed and ordi-nary citizens cannot be prosperous and secure.

Admittedly, these are big, hard issues and many people of good faith inside and outside of govern-ment are already working hard on them. All of us, not just our govern-ment, must do much more for this place we love.

Let’s really and truly make non-violence and public safety top civic priorities that receive more public and private resources along with sustained, visible attention and commitment. It will simply not suf-fice to take up these topics reluc-tantly, sporadically and only as needed to make ourselves look a little better in others’ eyes.

— John David Dyche is a Louisville attorney and a politi-cal commentator for WDRB.com. His email is jddyche@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter @jddyche.

Seeing Louisville’s issues the way outsiders see them

JOHN DAVIDDYCHE

Syndicated

columnist

“You can’t have accountability without transparency.” — State Auditor Adam Edelen.

Transparency is a key compo-nent in good government.

When citizens vote and elect a candidate of choice into office, they are voting for that person to represent them and to be open and transparent with them always. They are putting their trust into those they help elect.

Unfortunately, elected officials don’t always live up to the task of being transparent and looking out for the people’s best interest.

That certainly seems to be the case locally, after a state audit of the downtown parking garage wrap project, formerly known as Hitcents Park Plaza, showed that elected officials exercised inad-equate oversight of the project – which we now know involved $9.7 million in overspending and left a $4.5 million deficit.

Outgoing state Auditor Adam Edelen’s audit released this week not only found poor oversight, but also found numerous confusing agreements that led to numerous weaknesses and significant risks of waste and abuse. The auditor also mentioned Bowling Green busi-

nessman Rick Kelley, who was a consultant on the project, and the developer, Mills Family Realty, as having no expertise in this type of endeavor – both factors that crip-pled the project.

There is no mention in the audit whether there was any criminal wrongdoing. It was disappoint-ing that the audit didn’t directly answer the question of wheth-er there was illegal use of bond funds. Time will tell if there was or not, as Warren Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron said his office will be reviewing the audit.

Finger pointing by all parties involved has already begun. Some elected officials are saying it was the Mills family’s fault. Bowling Green Mayor Bruce Wilkerson read aloud a self-serving letter in

a city commission meeting sever-al months ago trying to distance himself from the troubled project. He and Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon say they didn’t know the extent that Kelley, who has had some past financial problems, was involved.

Clinton Mills said he couldn’t see how officials were not aware of Kelley’s involvement. “He was at every meeting I was at. He was involved every step of the way,” Mills said of Kelley.

Multiple emails documented Kelley as the person negotiating with all parties involved, attending meetings with local government entities and contractor Alliance Corp., and communicating finan-cial plans with projections to Mills Family Realty throughout the

duration of the project. Further documentation shows Kelley made changes to contracts and agreements that were later execut-ed, according to the audit report.

At the end of the day, there is a lot of blame to go around involv-ing this project, which initially was to cost about $25.5 million. The bottom line is that many people dropped the ball on this project, and they need to be held account-able for doing so.

It’s not enough for elected offi-cials to come out and play Monday morning quarterback and say “Yes, in hindsight we should have had more oversight.” Such comments are a day late and a dollar short. Had there been more transparency and better oversight, this project would have had a much better out-come.

Can you imagine the public outcry if citizens were aware that there was a modification to the lease agreement that allowed con-struction payment requests to be processed without certification by the architect?

In March, after the Daily News broke the story that payments to contractors were considerably overdue, one public official sug-

gested we were sensationalizing the story.

To the best of our knowledge, the facts we reported then – and as this story unfolded – have with-stood the test of time.

So, where are we now? We know that the project will cost $4.5 million more to complete because of lack of oversight and checks and balances. We know that cer-tain elected officials didn’t do their jobs by overseeing the project. We know this is a scathing audit that shows questionable activity occurred on this deal.

We also believe a lot of people involved in this project are not telling all they know to the public about what really happened.

The saddest part of this whole muddled morass is that the citi-zens of this community are the ones who will suffer, because they trusted their elected officials to be good stewards of their tax dollars, only to be let down.

The lack of oversight and trans-parency put taxpayers financially at risk. We suspect voters will remember which elected officials dropped the ball on this project and speak their minds in November at the polls.

THE DAILY NEWS

Officials get failing grade on wrapVoters should remember lack of transparency, oversight in future elections

There is a lot of blame to go around involving this project, which initially was to cost about $25.5 million. The bottom

line is that many people dropped the ball on this project, and they need to be held

accountable for doing so.

Must we really resolve to improve our diets or exercise routines in the New Year in order to increase longevity or improve quality of life?

Unfortunately, gun violence and traffic accidents are still the leading causes of death among young people. Fortunately, however, our fork – yet another deadly weapon – is within our own control. Well over a mil-lion of us are killed each year by high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and other chronic diseases linked to our meat-based diet.

So how exactly are we in con-trol? According to Gallup, more and more of us are choosing to avoid meat (22 percent) and also dairy products (12 percent). Supermarket chains, along with Target and Wal-Mart, offer a

growing selection of delicious and healthy plant-based meats and dairy products. Animal meat consumption has dropped by 8 percent in the past decade.

Hundreds of school, college, hospitals and corporate caf-eterias have embraced meat-less Monday and vegan meals. Fast-food chains like Chipotle, Panera, Subway, Taco Bell and White Castle, are rolling out vegan options.

Our own New Year’s resolu-tion can easily be about empow-ering ourselves with plant-based entrees, lunch meats, cheeses, ice creams and milks, as well as the more traditional green and yellow veggies. Recipes and transition tips are easy to find online.

Burt Kane Bowling Green

Resolve to add plants to dietMAILBOX

“We still have this fear, but we need to continue to live. We will celebrate.” — Myriam Oukik, of Paris, on worries about terror attacks

on New Year’s Eve.